I am currently on-site in the US at a client site for my company. Me going on-site was totally unexpected and very sudden. I’ll post a series of blog entries sequencing how it all happened. This is Part III…

On Thursday evening (the interview day), I went home, with very little expectations. After all, this was my first ‘phirangi’ interview (interview by foreigners (Americans in this case)). The expectations were further down coz of the fact that they wanted to have a look at my code and design before they decided. Now, I do code pretty decently, but I am not an amazing code wizard!

On Friday, I arrived at office at my usual time between 8:00 AM and 8:30 AM. I had no idea when I was going to receive information on my interview ‘result’. So, just sat in front of my work PC and did the usual stuff.

But, they had told me that if the client confirmed me, I might have to travel the very next day. I thought, well, let them confirm me first and I’ll think about traveling later. I have had a few not-so-good experiences when thinking & planning ahead and I have learnt to take things one small step at a time. I have realized that this is the right way to do things. Think ahead all you want, but don’t ever plan too far ahead.

Now, coming back to the actual story!

Friday, 10:00 AM – my PM calls me to his chambers and tells me that I have to go! The client must have been satisfied with whatever they heard from me and whatever they saw in the code. This was a big relief. I called home immediately and told them the news. Of course, they very were happy!

I was told to get ready to travel on a Sunday mid-night flight. I was also asked to get my International Driver’s License ready! This was one extra thing I had not anticipated – a time consuming one at that. I spoke to my PM and left office immediately. I went home, went to the RTO office (which is very near to my home) with my father, and to cut the long story short, managed to finish the procedure for the license by 1 PM.

After finishing the work at the RTO office, I went back to the office and started with all the stuff I had to do to get going the next day. Added to this, I still had to buy a lot of things for my travel and I had very limited time. At work, we don’t have a very streamlined procedure for foreign travel. I was told that I would be receiving my tickets and money in Bangalore on Saturday. After sometime, I got an email informing me that my ticket would be an eTicket – so, no tickets in Bangalore. I got my eTicket, took multiple printouts of it and collected all the required documents. I finally arrived home at 6:00 PM with a lot of stuff left to do. At home, I learnt that there was a delay in issuing the ILD, but my father had finally been able to collect it – that was a big relief.

My parents had already gone out to purchase some of the most obvious things. Meanwhile, my brother in Bangalore decided that he would drive all the way to Mysore and help me with this stuff. He arrived at around 7:30 PM. All of us had a little family chat and we decided that the best thing to do would be to leave Mysore early in the morning on Friday, do all the shopping in Bangalore, collect the travel money and get ready to travel.

We met a couple of relatives (two of my mother’s sisters and their family) and told them about the news. I called my close friends and the ones who were in Mysore that day came over to my place around 9 PM and we had a nice chat about, well, nothing!

I
am currently on-site in the US at a client site for my company. Me going
on-site was totally unexpected and very sudden. I’ll post a series of blog
entries sequencing how it all happened. This is Part II…

The
client interview was scheduled for Thursday morning, between 8:30 AM and 10:00
AM IST. I arrived at the office at around 7:30 AM. Once I reached office, I got
an SMS from my PM informing me that the interview was scheduled for 8:30 AM.
Then my PM arrived at around 8:15 AM. He checked his email and told me that the
interview was now scheduled at 9:30 AM. I went back to place and waited…

9:30
AM – The interview call starts with the usual greetings and introductions. I
was then grilled for an hour and in the end was requested to send some code and
design samples. I was told that they will confirm if am suitable for the job at
hand after having a look at the code and design samples.

My
PM and me came out of the conference room and I was asked to extract some code
and design samples from my previous work/projects. I set about doing this and provided
the required samples by 3:00 PM. I personally thought that the interview went
OK.

I am currently on-site in the US at a client site for my company. Me going on-site was totally unexpected and very sudden. I’ll post a series of blog entries sequencing how it all happened. This is Part I…

Some background:

I have been working where I am working for almost 3 years now. Until January 2006, I was working on projects that serve other divisions of the company – internal projects in short. I had requested my bosses to give me an opportunity to work for external clients – i.e. on external projects. My request was granted in end December and I moved over to a group serving a client in the US and started here on January 2nd – the first working day of the calendar year. The main reason for requesting this change was not because I didn’t like the work I was doing (I liked it… and I learnt a lot), but because I wanted to work on other things too and wanted an opportunity to go on-site (there is little chance of that happening when one works on internal projects).

You may have to go on-site!!!:

Fast-forward 3 months to March 8th. I was there at work in front of my computer, when my PM suddenly called me into his chamber, at around 10:30 in the morning. I couldn’t think of a reason for this! I rushed to his chamber clutching a book and a pen (always useful!) and sat down in front of him. And, he said, “You have an opportunity to go on-site. You have to go on-site to replace <someone> since that person has to come back due to personal reasons” (after being there for only 2 weeks). I said, “OK… what’s the project on and when should I be leaving?” His reply, “You will have to leave in a couple of days, pending an interview with the client”. I thought that was really short preparation time (though he did ask me if I would be able to leave so soon)… I couldn’t start preparing until the client thought I was good enough to come all the way to their place! He said he would send some documents about the project and asked me to go through it.

I said OK and went back to my place, waiting for his email containing the project details. He also gave me some hints to prepare for the client interview, which was on the very next morning IST, 9th March. I went through the project docs, which wasn’t much. I started preparing for the interview. The project work was something along the lines of what I had done in the internal projects, though this project was in a completely different field.

I prepared as much as I could and went home early (around 7 pm). I told my mother about it and asked her not to tell anyone else about it until it was confirmed. And, I prepared some more for the client interview.